Chains Use Guest History To Deliver Personal Service

<B> Chains Use Guest History To Deliver Personal Service</B>

By Maria Vallejo

Several large hotel chains are investing in developing and enhancing guest history technology to disseminate preferred guest information chainwide. These advances are enabling them to deliver the kind of personalized guest service previously provided only at the individual property level.

Single hotel properties have long used note cards and individual property databases to hold frequent-guest information. Now hotel companies, such as Ritz-Carlton, Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Carlson Hospitality Worldwide, Preferred Hotels & Resorts and Swissotel, are building on the success of these property-by-property guest history databanks across their portfolios to meet growing expectations for service and to ensure customer loyalty.

Corporate travel buyers increasingly have been demanding improved personalized service for their travelers to compensate for rising room rates and the lack of last room availability.

"We are requiring more and more," said a Fortune 100 travel manager. "If they want a buck, they have to deliver a lot more than a buck for that dollar's worth of cash."

But industry consolidation and the expansion of the number of hotel properties per chain has led to less individualized attention to frequent travelers, analysts said. This trend only further emphasizes the need for the personalized service that advanced guest history programs can deliver, they said.

"Because of a focus on expansion and the market, I see guest services dropping off," said analyst Ted Mandigo, president of Chicago-based T.R. Mandigo. "You're losing the person to person contact. Technology should provide us with guest responsive systems that have been lost."

Hoteliers see improving guest history databases as an opportunity to keep customers loyal after the seller's market runs its cycle, by recognizing such preferences as foam pillows, all-strawberry fruit baskets and non-smoking rooms.

"You have to take care of guests in the good times and the bad," said Peter Cass, president and CEO of Chicago-based Preferred Hotels & Resorts. "We have to make sure that they get a sense of value today so when the market changes, we can make sure that they still value our relationship."

Among the leaders in the guest history technology race, Atlanta-based Ritz-Carlton by May 1 will complete the worldwide rollout of its repeat guest recognition system, Customer Loyalty Anticipation Satisfaction System (Class), said vice president of sales and marketing Jim Schultenover. Ritz-Carlton beta tested the $3 million project for about 18 months in the United States and completed a full national rollout in February.

Individual Ritz-Carlton properties already captured and used frequent guest history data. Class integrated the individual database information stored at each hotel into a centralized system.

The Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City in Washington, D.C., the first beta test site, recognized 20 to 25 percent additional Ritz-Carlton repeat guests. Before the implementation of Class, those guests would have received the same general treatment in the hotel as any first time customer, despite their frequent stays at other properties.

"We're definitely recognizing a lot more people," said Ashleigh Smith, Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City's guest recognition coordinator. "It used to be property specific, but now we're looking at everybody corporate-wide. It's going to be standardized throughout the company. They're going to feel the same recognition and service."

Taking its lead from Ritz-Carlton's Class example, Washington, D.C.-based Marriott Hotels & Resorts completed a Marriott Rewards database system for guest history information in October. Unlike Class, Marriott's database system stores only basic information, including preferred bed type, floor, non/smoking, view and accessibility. The guest history program contains profiles on about 9 million Marriott Rewards members.

The information is stored inside the corporate Marriott Automated Reservation System for Hotel Accommodations (Marsha). The information will be disseminated across Marriott's numerous brands, including Marriott Hotels, Resorts and Suites, Renaissance, Courtyard, New World Hotels Internationa and Executive Residences. Prior to the system, guests needed to create another profile with each initial stay at a new Marriott brand property. "I believe that over time people's expectations become higher the more they stay with you," said Susan Reardon, Marriott's brand director. "The personalization is important because they're away from their home and need you to recognize them, almost like a family."

Similarly, Carlson Hospitality Worldwide is investing hundreds of millions of dollars towards developing new technology, including a centralized database system that will link its three hotel brands and allow Regent, Radisson and Country Inns & Suites to share guest profile information. Corporate customers staying at different Carlson brands will benefit the most from the new system, company officials said, noting a significant overlap of Radisson's corporate customer base in Regent and Country Inns & Suites.

Radisson has 200 key global corporate accounts, which by definition have formal travel policies and a minimum volume of 3,000 room nights per year. About two-thirds of Radisson's business comes from corporate transient and group business.

"Technology will change the way hotel reservations are made and the experience will become more personal," said Radisson's president Brian Stage. "It's to create an experience where people think we've anticipated their needs."

The consolidation of information into Carlson's Harmony system is part of a larger technology initiative accompanying the Carlson Companies' handover to Marilyn Carlson Nelson after her father's retirement (see story, page 1).

Preferred Hotels & Resorts, a global hospitality marketing consortium of 115 hotels, with 200 corporate clients and a 72 percent business traveler client base, is in the beginning phases of linking some of its individual properties to a centralized database system using its Guestnet system. Each property contains a database with customer profile information of Preferred Alliance members that is synthesized into a centralized system.

After starting the process in January 1997, Preferred now has about 800,000 customer profiles in the central system. It allows seven hotels to access specific customer information, such as food and room preferences. "The ultimate benefit is they're going to get more personalized attention," Cass said. "The bottom line for value is giving personalized service, and luxury hotels have to do that."

By the end of the year, about 20 hotels will share 2 million customer profiles. Preferred expects about 40 to 50 member hotels to join the technology project. The system, which costs about $10,000 per hotel installation, also allows hotels to access Guestnet's Cohorts II data, which identifies 27 consumer groups that can help the hotels target market.

<B>Chains Gain Insight</B>

These databases also allow hotel companies to understand their customers' basic cultures. By running queries on specific subjects and analyzing captured guest information, hotel companies develop basic protocol for different ethnic or social groups. Some companies noted that Japanese and French travelers often prefer smoking rooms, while certain ethnic groups require particular meal offerings.

While these larger hotel companies are proving centralized chainwide guest history databases are possible, some smaller hotel companies insist information sharing with fewer properties is more conducive to success. Swissotels, fo example, nightly updates information from eight hotels linked to its Fidelio central database.

Given that the company has fewer properties, it was able to begin using the system about three years ago, said Chris Riga, Swissotel's senior vice president of sales and marketing. Swissotels has 18 properties worldwide. "That's the beauty of being the small size that we are," he said.

The company encounters some difficulty transferring the information internationally because of language barriers. Given guests' diversity, it also must be aware of different titles, postal codes and social preferences based on their culture.

"Technology is an enabler for us to do a better job and measure the effectiveness of how we handle our customers and give personalized service," Riga said. "That's what the future is all about.